Posts Tagged ‘Glen Gray’

The Laptop Ensemble from Cal State Long Beach is coming to Tuesdays at Monk Space on January 24 to perform Voyage, a reconceptualization of German lied by Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, and Brahms. In 2013 the group teamed up with a Korean theatre troupe led by Byunkoo Ahn and premiered the concept at the Spoleto Open Festival dei due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. Nearly four years later, we are reimagining the concept once again in Germany with the same troupe. This time, we’re joined by local German singers and have some new works to premiere. The composers all come directly from the ensemble, something the CSULB Laptop Ensemble does almost all of the time.

Which leads to an important question: what is “Laptop Ensemble”?

The origin story begins with composition professors Martin Herman and Carolyn Bremer, who founded the ensemble in 2010. Composition graduate students Zach Lovitch, Andy Zacharias, Seth Shafer, and Brad Van Wick were already putting on elaborate concerts at the time. These concerts featured various analog and modular synthesizers, as well as electroacoustic music with live performance from laptops. After seeing these student-run concerts, Martin was so impressed by the group that they joined forces to create the Laptop Ensemble. From then on, the performers have always been alumni or current CSULB students. It’s always been a small group, typically around 5 or 6 members (with an all-time high of 13). In performance, however, the group is typically a quartet. The group is self-sufficient, writing all of their music mostly in Max-MSP. Their unique speaker arrays, following the PLOrk model, were built by founding member Zach Lovitch, Martin Brenner, and Martin Herman.

It was only a couple of years after formation that the group went to Spoleto to perform Voyage. This time around there are lots of new faces in the group, but most of the pieces are revised versions of works from the 2013 festival.

About the Program

The opener, Silbertöne by Seth Shafer, is nothing short of attention grabbing. It’s complete with punchy, arpeggiated synths and deep bass tones – a stark contrast to the violin samples that weave in and out throughout. Shafer is also the composer of Upon Return to Earth, a beautiful work that comes later in the program. Feldeinsamkeit, reimagined by the ensemble’s director Martin Herman, is both meditative and glitchy, with captivating sounds that trickle in and out. Long-time member Glen Gray wrote the next piece, Dein Angesicht. It is an abstraction of art song, with piano and voice filtered through an array of effects and electronic drone joining the duet later on. Assistant director of the ensemble Matthew Lourtie is the composer of Nacht und Trauma. His version is a complete turn from Schubert’s original Nacht und Träume (Night and Dreams). Sinken by Justin Kennedy is a stunning underwater sound world, with melodic whale calls and resonant percussion contributing to the landscape.

Three of the works are newly composed for the 2017 tour. George Wheeler, a lecturer at CSULB and stand-in member of the ensemble, wrote a new version of Ave Maria. It features arpeggiated harmonies over a bed of musique concrète and long melodic tones. These overlapping melodies, along with the arpeggiation, gradually become more dissonant and distorted before returning to consonance. Next is my own version of Schubert’s Du bist die Ruh.It begins with a new art song using the same text, which is filtered to sound as though it could be coming from off-stage. This leads to a duet of filtered singing bowls and a resonant, melodic bass, and a processed version of the same art song overlaid. The concert closes with a new piece by Oscar Santos-Carrillo, Abendroth. It involves four layered patches, which are largely influenced by hip-hop and industrial sounds. In fact, two of the patches are essentially filtered kick drums with effects. The piece begins with a sample of the original art song by Schubert, a nod to the sampling pervasive in hip-hop music, which then morphs into a larger cluster of sound.